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John Cleese and the Blind Spot

John Cleese has given some very clever talks on creativity in which he comes off as a ‘defacto taoist’, so to speak. I suppose anyone with a contrarian point of view is a potential ‘defacto taoist’.

Before reading on, please please Google John Cleese on Creativity (video from a training) for a selection of video clips, or see http://www.centertao.org/media/BlindSpot.mp3 for a pithy audio clip. The most striking part comes toward the end when he describes the Blind Spot (1), which I feel parallels the Peter Principle.

The Blind Spot

This idea of backing off in order to move forward, and the humorous way he talks about the “blind spot”, parallels core Taoist principles.

What causes this “blind spot”, and why does “sleeping on it” work, are questions that crop up. No sooner do I wonder why, than the word ‘agenda’ comes to mind. An agenda blinds me to the big picture. The whole point of an agenda is that it narrows the focus of life to a linear plan safely ‘inside the box’. When I “sleep on it”, I am backing away from the urgency of my agenda for a while. That distance allows me to see more broadly ‘outside the box’ and find a way around the current problem. That distance allows me to see more of the forest rather than just trees.

The next question that comes to mind, what gives birth to my agenda in the first place? Clearly, fear and need play a central role. These primal emotions fuel an agenda born from my desires and ideals — the thinking side of need(2). What I think blocks out or otherwise skews perception to favor these emotions – and voila! I’ve created my personal agenda along with its inherent blind spots.

How do I know when I have a blind spot? Any stimuli out in the world that directly affects my agenda, hidden or not, will produce symptoms. One of the most evident symptoms is anger, or its counterpart flight — fight or flight. Beneath that, of course, lie my primal fears and needs. Using any sign of anger as a symptom of a likely blind spot can speak volumes about me. Here is where the courage of self-honesty comes in, and where the difficulty lies. Fortunately, as chapter 63 notes, Difficult things in the world must have their beginnings in the easy. The ‘easy beginning’, in this case, is simply accepting that anger is a symptom of my blind spot, and therefore important, if I actually value being true to myself.

Seeing past my blind spot is only half the journey. I also have what I’d call a “crippled spot”. Here, emotion is now essential to live true, and practice what I preach. Emotion creates the blind spot, yet ironically, I draw on emotion to drive me passed it. This parallels Buddhas Eight Fold Path: First comes seeing my possible blind spot (Right Comprehension). Next comes remembering my possible blind spot (Right Resolution, Right Thought), and finally comes the emotional will to live in accord with what I know (Right Effort, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Living).

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive incapacity, on the part of those with low ability, to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their competence accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.

(2) Viewed more closely, desire seems to be an amalgamation of instinctive emotion — ‘gut’ need — and thinking. Without that thinking side, spontaneous need would move us just as it does for all other animals. Need, and its source spring fear, is a primal driving force in life. Without it, we’re dead — literally. Any misgivings we have, need to focus on the thinking side of desire. Thinking beats the drum of emotion, easily making mountains out of the molehills of need and fear.

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Thanks for mentioning the John Cleese video at our morning meeting today (7/1/12). It helps to be reminded (again and again) how powerful and wise the unconscious is, like a magnificent horse that’s had eons to perfect its nature. So many times our thoughts are pesky flies that bite our unconscious horse without mercy and prevent it from going all-out in our service.

Personally I found that my faith in ‘sleeping on it’ grew over many years. In youth, I over-thought and over-did most everything, and truth be told, I still do (my original nature, you know). Yet, age has smoothed over the rough edges. So, like good whiskey, nothing can substitute for age. It helps, at least somewhat, to know there is a way that works.

I sometimes find myself interrupting my own boundaries of space/time, tripping up over emotions and especially over-thinking.
‘Sleeping on it’ can sometimes prove to be challenging when my mind is trying to think something six ways from Sunday instead of just letting it be.
I guess mindful observance is a work in progress:
The lighter one steps through the world, the less one is effected by it.

I’ve definitely noticed how being annoyed/angry/frustrated when I’m getting advice or feedback about something is a good sign that I have a blind spot there. I’ll be thinking, “I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it.” And yet a small part of me reluctantly sees that often the things that I “don’t want to hear” illuminate my blind spots.

In other words, anything you find yourself avoiding is worth investigating. 🙂